One of the unfathomable mysteries of the Bible is this passage about the red heifer, a law which appears to be without any rational explanation.

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‘And the pure person shall gather the ashes of the cow and shall place them
outside the encampment in a pure place; this shall be a keepsake for the
witness- community of the Israelites, to be used as purifying water; it is a
sin-offering’ (Numbers 19:9)

One of the unfathomable mysteries of the Bible is
this passage about the red heifer, a law which appears to be without any
rational explanation, and about which the wisest of mortals, King Solomon,
declared, “I thought I could fathom it with my wisdom, but it remains far away
from me and elusive” (Ecclesiastes 7:23).

We shall attempt to unlock the
symbolism behind this very strange procedure, and in so doing hopefully
understand the identity of the “pure person” as well as the reference to the red
heifer as a “sin offering.”

The Israelites were to bring a red heifer
without blemish and on which no yoke had been laid; it was to be taken outside
the holy encampment and slaughtered before the eyes of the High Priest, in sight
of the Holy of Holies but far from it, where the Mount of Olives cemetery is now
located. The cow was then completely burned – its hide, flesh, blood and even
dung – with the kohen (priest) casting cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet thread
into the flames (Numbers 19:1-6).

I suggest that the cow represents the
Jewish nation, the “mother” of all nations, which nourishes the world with the
milk of human kindness, compassionate righteousness and moral justice, the
openhouse hospitality taught by Abraham and Sarah. The cow is red because red is
the color of blood, and blood is the life/soul of humanity. Without the moral
teachings of Israel, without the seven Noahide Laws and the Ten Commandments,
the free world would cease to exist, and humanity would dissolve in a blast of
nuclear explosions.

“Israel” was to be taken outside – beyond the
encampment of moral, human beings – to the bestial world of Auschwitz and
Treblinka, where six million innocent men and women, totally pure children and
babies, people who had not known any enslavement before, would be slaughtered by
fire; human lives and human dreams were charred black in a hell devised by human
demons, human remains going up in the smokestacks of Satan’s funeral
pyre.

There were no exceptions, no reprieves for those doomed to die only
because they were Jews: The Jews’ proud, straight and tall cedar trees –
communal leaders such as rabbis, judges and philanthropists – were taken along
with the lowly, poverty-stricken Jews, akin to the hyssop plant. And yes, within
this fiery mix was also the scarlet color of sin, for there were sinning Jews as
well.

What heinous crime had been committed by the “cow” to make it
deserving of such a fate? Perhaps is was no sin at all, perhaps it was merely
the price exacted from the messages of the good, the teacher of compassionate
righteousness and social justice, the upholder of individual human dignity and
freedom in the evil powers of fascism, fanatic jihad and totalitarian
enslavement. Do not our sages teach that from Sinai itself descended the sin’a –
hatred against the people of the ethical way? But then our biblical text does
call this “red cow” a “sin offering,” albeit for an inadvertent transgression.
After all, were we not intended to be “a blessing to the families of the earth,”
to teach future generations compassionate righteousness and moral justice, to be
a light unto the nations? Is it not biblically sound to suggest that we are the
suffering servant of Isaiah 53, bearing the sins of the world because we did not
fulfill our mission as a “sacred nation and a kingdom of priests/teachers”? And
a sin offering brings atonement and forgiveness.

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Hence the pure person –
and only God is a truly pure “person” – will gather the ashes of the cow, mix
them with the living waters which symbolize our sacred Torah and, by means of
His agent the kohen sprinkle the mixture on the hapless individual who has
become impure by contact with death.

Only God can save a mortal from
death.

And just as the individual can be purified and revived, so can the
nation. The ashes were taken by the pure person to a “pure place” to be
replanted in the soil of the Holy Land. The dry-bone remnants of the Jewish
people developed flesh and sinews and souls, and now walk and live and sing once
again on the streets of Jerusalem and the public places of Judea.

The
true mystery of the red heifer is the ability of Israel to rise from the ashes
of Auschwitz to the glories of the reborn Jewish state, the eternal life of the
eternal people. And the only one who can explain the mystery is the very one who
effectuates it, the pure person, Almighty God Himself. We in our generation have
been granted a magnificent opportunity. This time, may we not be found
wanting.

The writer is the founder and chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone
Colleges and Graduate Programs, and chief rabbi of Efrat.

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